Watch the Obama Inauguration With Moonlight 197
bigmonachus writes "Miguel de Icaza has posted on his blog that linux users will be able to watch the Obama inauguration using Moonlight. Just go to the Moonlight download page to get it. He also said that some Microsoft engineers worked hard last night to make this happen."
A point for MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A point for MS (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, they just did it because they found out they were part of the 15,000 being laid off.
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you misspelled 17,000
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Did they change something in the presentation videothingy or did they added some support/fixes into moonlight? I'd assume the later which indeed was very nice of them :)
Re:A point for MS (Score:5, Informative)
They've basically provided a separate Silverlight 1.0 player that's tested to be compatible with Moonlight. If you go to the website, you'll see that you have to click a special link to navigate to that player - the main one will still complain that you don't have Silverlight 2.0 installed.
Well, it's good enough for now.
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They are as good to Linux users as a fisherman is good to trout. Hey look free food.
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Re:A point for MS (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you are overly cynical. Let's face it, for some folks MS just can't win... if they implement something early, it's a trap, if they implement it just in time, they are just making the gesture, and if they don't implement it, they are trying to squash the competition. How about just appreciating the fact that some MS employees work hard to support a platform that competes directly with their own?
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How about just appreciating the fact that some MS employees work hard to support a platform that competes directly with their own?
Because that's not what happened? The "platform" in question is Silverlight. That competes with Flash, so they worked hard to support their platform *against* the competition. This has nothing at all to do with Linux as a platform versus Windows as a platform.
So there is nothing at all here to appreciate. It was obviously a completely self-serving action.
Pay just a little bit of
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From the Moonlight download page:
"Moonlight is an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight for Unix systems."
So MS engineers worked overtime to make an opensource implementation of their product work on a an OS that competes with Windows. Which is what I said.
And I noticed that you didn't have an answer for the point of my post, which was that on something like this, MS is going to take crap no matter what they do.
DO NOT INSTALL (Score:5, Informative)
I do not know which extension is conflicting with the mono extension, but Firefox now takes over 4 minutes to start up, and the same amount of time to load google. I thought that it was locked up, but I decided to sit it out to see if it would work. It did, after four minutes! Kubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.5.
I have a few extensions, so with 4+ minute startup times it is slow going finding out where the conflict is. I use the all in one sidebar, autoauth cookieculler, flashblock, link alert, locationbar limit, locationbar2, menu editor, no squint, openbook, repagination, scrapbook, searchwith, stylish, tagsifter, text link, tiny menu, tree style tab, vimperator, and web developer. If you use any of these, then be forewarned!
Yea... That means alot. (Score:4, Funny)
"Microsoft engineers worked hard last night to make this happen."
Didn't they say the same thing about Windows XP a week before release?
Re:Yea... That means alot. (Score:5, Funny)
...and again a week after Vista was released.
Change but not all change is good... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not sure why they just didn't use Flash. I guess Microsoft paid them a lot of money. At least with flash you have native support for Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, PowerPC Macs. With the GNU Flash equivalent you also allow some of the BSD guys to watch too.
While I am happy that they made an open source port so quickly however. It is just a hack for a one time occasion. For people with different needs will still be left out in the cold.
Re:Change but not all change is good... (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, between Silverlight/Moonlight and Flash, Silverlight/Moonlight is obviously the superior technology. It's also, ironically, the more open of the two.
And we've known for a long, long time that Flash was junk. It's just that now that Microsoft has their own competing technology, all of a sudden we're like "What's wrong with Flash?"
Seriously. Just because you or I may not like Microsoft, you have to give props where props are due.
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I understand your point that you are talking to the general slashdot crowd. But I personally have been on record neutral or favorable of flash.
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To be honest, between Silverlight/Moonlight and Flash, Silverlight/Moonlight is obviously the superior technology. It's also, ironically, the more open of the two.
Do enlighten me, how is silverlight superior in such an obvious way? It's not as if flash was standing still for the last 4 years. .NET? Not just talking about versions here. I mean really, have you even seen a program using winforms on linux, because it just looks broken most of the time(just as broken as 2 years ago).
Do you honestly think mono will ever be on par to
Anyway have fun.
Re:Change but not all change is good... (Score:5, Informative)
Built-in optimization for multimedia. Streams better. Go to the Singtel Grid Girls [singtelrace.com] site; you'll see 60 videos being loaded in one go (5 * 4 grid with three states for each girl). Not a Flash guy myself, but I'm told streaming it all is a bitch in Flash. Not so in Silverlight.
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It is just a hack for a one time occasion.
Ummm... I just took the ten seconds to install the Moonlight plugin for Firefox 3 (running under Ubuntu 8.04 i386). After I'm done watching the presidential inauguration, what precisely is stopping me from continuing to use the plugin to interact with other Silverlight-based content?
Listen, I'm a fairly serious open source developer myself, and I'm excited about a new technology that attempts to rectify some of the shortcomings we've all suffered from with Flash. Why can't you just give credit where it's
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I'm not saying it was done this way but the pesemistic side wants to think that the changes made might have been made in the streaming format specific to this event also. That would mean that after it's done with, it won't wo
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Ummm... I just took the ten seconds to install the Moonlight plugin for Firefox 3 (running under Ubuntu 8.04 i386). After I'm done watching the presidential inauguration, what precisely is stopping me from continuing to use the plugin to interact with other Silverlight-based content?
Perhaps other content requires features not yet implemented. Are they using DRM for the inauguration? I doubt it. Do most silverlight videos use DRM? Yes. That's kind of it's selling point right now due to Adobe's buggy easily circumvented DRM.
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If you are using dictation software, please let me know which one because mine doesn't get the number of "m"s accurate, and completely skips ellipses.
Otherwise, you may not be familiar with this intartubes thingy, but you can actually stop to think about what you're typing so you don't have all of the "um", "uh", and other filler words that people use to give themselves time to think. Take all the time you want. And yes, I swear to your chosen deity I will punch the next person who says "umm, hell
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The new code MS developers contributed recently may have been quickly implemented, but it really is ignorant to the work that's been going on to refer to MoonLight as a quickly made port/hack. It's been in development since 2007. It's not for a one time occasion.
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``I am not sure why they just didn't use Flash.''
Here's a novel idea: why don't they just use a STANDARD VIDEO FORMAT? These can be played on pretty much any computer. No need to complicate things by adding Flash/Silverlight/ActiveX/gremlins to the mix.
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Here's a novel idea: why don't they just use a STANDARD VIDEO FORMAT?
Because the majority of the browser market doesn't support the <video> tag
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What is another good standardized streaming video format? MPEG and several others are decent, but don't necessary stream well. A download-then-play format won't work. Quicktime just sucks from top to bottom. There's other solutions that are free and standard (the BBC's format, isn't there? And the one being done by the OGG people?), but I'm s
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Because Microsoft is playing nice with the new administration and getting a lot of free advertising to boot. Did you see the Photosynth [photosynth.net] stuff that CNN was drooling over during the festivities today> Yep, that's a Microsoft Labs product.
It's an advertising coup that bodes ill for open source in the new administration.
The best way to watch the inauguration (Score:4, Insightful)
I was on the National Mall for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, so let me suggest that the absolute best way to watch the Presidential inauguration is to watch it on the news that evening.
They'll cut out all the boring crap. You don't have to spend all morning standing around in the freezing cold. And you don't have to miss work.
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And since it's at night, you could really watch it under moonlight!
MS makes a very compelling case (Score:3, Insightful)
I just downloaded it, it was a 64-bit XPI.
Way easier than installing flash, now I am curious if it will work.
Additionally, the client is open source, and Adobe has wielded the software patent hammer in the past (against flash I think even). So it's not easy to call MS particularly the greater evil here.
Re:MS makes a very compelling case (Score:4, Interesting)
Moonlight is open source, but the codecs are not - they are binary blobs written by (gulp) Microsoft. But for those living in patent-brain-damaged countries, it's about the least bad of several bad alternatives.
Adobe has done some 'evil' things but then so has every software company, even Google. I don't think that playing corporate melodrama, picking goodies and baddies, is a sensible way to decide what software to use. Judge whether you have freedom to use, share and change the software in each case. (For the Flash player the answer is clearly no, although Gnash is getting better.)
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Yeah, I do think their past behavior matters. I'm not touching Microsoft with a ten foot pole.
Or going within chair throwing distance, for that matter.
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Silverlight is the way to go (Score:5, Funny)
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Silverlight is just a pleasure to program in. Being a subset of dotnet you have just a gazillion great classes at the top of your fingers for you to use in any language you want that just supports .NET.
This is modded funny--only because there are evidently at least 3 moderators who have never programed anything in ActionScript: the only programming language more frustrating than a crude stick and a punchcard.
Wow (Score:2)
Good interpretation, I know. *bow* ^^
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Is any news source streaming the ceremony in a truly open format? (One that doesn't require binary blobs to watch legally in the US.)
Hulu is advertising; they're Flash (Score:2)
Hulu is advertising the inauguration live. Will they be using Silverlight for this, too, or will they use the traditional Flash player??
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They're showing Fox News right now. It's Flash.
WHY ?! (Score:2)
it comes with a 1-2 million crowded facebook event to boot.
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I just followed your link and it said something about having to install some octoset improvement plugin or something for flash. I refused to install it and the video and all plays perfectly fine.
You have any idea what the hell that is and why it claims it is needed when it obviously isn't? It sort of sounds like it might be some sort of spyware or something. I don't trust CNN anymore then I do Fox or any other mass news company.
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It's probably the facebook crap that causes that. Facebook is blocked at work and the video feed still works.
yes (Score:2)
Another option for Linux users (Score:3, Interesting)
TV. It seems to work everywhere. I'm guessing it will be broadcast live in several countries, and even when it's not, the evening news will have the summary.
And of course, YouTube will have the speech later today.
I don't think waiting a few hours presents any sort of hardship.
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If you want to watch the stream... (Score:4, Informative)
You can also just use vlc: vlc 'http://msstudios-chan2-wsx.wm.llnwd.net/msstudios_chan1_wsx?MSWMExt=.asf' or vlc 'http://87.248.216.216:80/msstudios_chan1_wsx?MSWMExt=.asf'
This way you get fullscreen, stutter-free sound and video without agreeing to any license agreements or burning a hole in your processor... and you don't have to install anything besides vlc (but that was already installed, wasn't it?)
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Very cool. It's not working for me though. I got a VLC error then the video started to stream for about half a second before it froze. In all fairness it's most likely my ISP, my 5 Mbps connection is running at 1% of it's capacity.
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I was also able to open that URL in Totem and watch, thanks!
Crashes my firefox. (Score:2)
Installed it, and when I go back to that page, my browser crashes. This honestly makes a lot of sense when I hear that that rushed to get it out. It's to be expected.
Ah well. I'll install it again in four years.
Linux users - use this page! (Score:3, Informative)
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Thank you! Didn't know we needed a special page.
This works beautifully!
doesn't work (Score:2, Informative)
oops?
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Ditto. Glad they at least TRIED to get it to work.
My company blocks all streaming video anyway, so I'm just going to have to resort to watching it on TV in the conference room...
CNN Live (Score:2)
Or not. (Score:2)
Chanj (Score:2)
You can haz it.
WOHOO!!! (Score:4, Funny)
*light.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Who needed silverlight or moonlight to watch? Numerous public sources streamed the event in flash. I'm sure this Miguel guy is a nice fellow, but his dancing with/for Microsoft doesn't seem right to me.
Excellent (Score:2)
Hopefully some of the work done here pushes us closer to a Netflix option for Linux also, but this stream was DRM free, and needed a seperate silverlight 1 runtime for Linux.. Seems like we still have a way to go.
Wake up people (Score:2)
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And i'm sure that they, like myself, were totally shocked at the rising of the sun again today. Can you imagine the odds!
TBH, i'm surprised to find so many positive comments (i, semi-jokingly, wonder about astroturfing).
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I'm sure Microsoft employees work hard every day on (almost) everything that Microsoft produces. I'm not sure why this would be considered remarkable or especially praise-worthy for Linux users.
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Surprisingly, a lot of comments have been of the "I'm no fan of MS, but kudos to them for this" variety. I'm not going to install it for the inauguration - hell I'm Australian and still I can watch it live on two free to air stations or the BBC, CNN and Fox cable coverage - but still I congratulate MS for catering to the mac and linux communities when really they could have easily ignored them.
Re:Or not (Score:5, Interesting)
I love Linux and run it on many computers at home, and have never been particularly fond of Microsoft, but you really have to give this to them. It's more open than what Adobe have to offer and they're being far more cooperative than Adobe generally were. Remember, mono/moonlight are *open source*.. not even just a binary blob provided by Microsoft.
They've repeatedly helped the Mono developers and have truly made an effort to set a new precedent with many of their .NET technologies. In general, they're far more open (in specification and implementation) than their previous development efforts. Their new file formats aren't perfect, but they're certainly better than what came before.
I suppose that this, codeplex and their other efforts could be all a big plot to win mindshare from OSS developers and users and convert them to MS, then they'll break compatibility again, but really if they think that will succeed, they're living in a fairy tale world. Honestly, I do think this is an attempt to be a bit more cooperative, even for business reasons. The best thing we can do as Linux users is support actions that facilitate open platform and do our best to stifle technologies that are clearly an attempt to do the opposite. For example, if you work in a MS shop, try to get them to use their more open products over their closed ones.
What I think this is truly indicating is that OSS (and Apple) are hurting Microsoft's profit, and they're doing their best to hold their position in a more cross-platform market.
Re:Or not (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? I see their Silverlight/moonlight cooperation as being the same strategy of DirectX/Internet Explorer, as a second chance to try and take over the Web once and for all.
I'm never installing anything from Microsoft again. And if your website requires it, you just lost a customer.
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Even though its a different stream, the fact that the website was willing to put up support for other systems sets an excellent precedent.
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Fortunately for you, you don't have to install something from microsoft, you have to install something from an open source project.
But you do. You have 3 options:
1) install moonlight from the link then install the microsoft multimedia pack. Thats a no go for me i dont want to replace one proprietary plugin with one and a bit
2) manually download ffmpeg & moonlight and compile moonlight. A royal PITA that didn't work last time i tried (probably a few Gentoo users sitting laughing at how easy it was fo them though)
3) Stick with flash. Hell its not nice but its better than 1 or 2 for me.
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Funny? I second his opinions, but in a surly, stoic and humourless manner.
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I love Linux and run it on many computers at home, and have never been particularly fond of Microsoft, but you really have to give this to them. It's more open than what Adobe have to offer and they're being far more cooperative than Adobe generally were. Remember, mono/moonlight are *open source*.. not even just a binary blob provided by Microsoft.
More open that what Adobe has to offer? Microsoft isn't offering Moonlight, so that's not really a fair comparison. There have been open source Flash implementations for years. The only reason they aren't at feature parity with proprietary Flash is that Adobe actually releases it's software on Linux. Had they not, then Gnash would probably be much further along, if not at total feature parity. In essence you're giving credit to Microsoft for not releasing Silverlight for Linux.
Re:Or not (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the main reason the free flash implementations are lagging, is that they have been reverse engineering the format, unlike the Moonlight people, who have specs to work from.
There were specs for Flash too, but until very recently, the license for those specs specifically forbid using them to implement a viewer.
Because of this, even though flash player is the most crappy piece of software I've ever seen on any Linux machine, the free alternatives still haven't been able to beat it.
So yes, Microsoft has been more open. Not just more open, but so much more open that they ended up forcing Adobe to become more open. Competition
for the flash format is good, and Adobe opening up the specs after Silverlight appeared is proof of this.
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No, the main reason the free flash implementations are lagging, is that they have been reverse engineering the format, unlike the Moonlight people, who have specs to work from.
The specs for Silverlight haven't been out all that much longer than the specs for Flash, and it did have about a decade to reverse engineer before that. The only possible reason they aren't further along is lack of developer interest. What else can that be attributed to but the availability of Flash on Linux?
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How is it more open than Flash? The Flash spec is released by Adobe in case you missed it. Adobe also themselves provide a complete implementation.
They don't try to get open source developers to fill in the gaps for them for free, they put in the sweat and expense all alone. It also doesn't require last-minute quick fixes to make it work. This whole thing is exactly why Flash is a better platform for this than Silverlight.
I've got a live feed running from CNN right now which didn't require me to patch j
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Flash isn't free software though, which is the point here.
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Gnash or Swfdec, sure.
Moonlight is deceptive. The code is LGPL, the codecs are EULA.
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I suppose that this, codeplex and their other efforts could be all a big plot to win mindshare from OSS developers and users and convert them to MS, then they'll break compatibility again, but really if they think that will succeed, they're living in a fairy tale world. Honestly, I do think this is an attempt to be a bit more cooperative, even for business reasons. The best thing we can do as Linux users is support actions that facilitate open platform and do our best to stifle technologies that are clearly an attempt to do the opposite.
The crux to this strategy of supporting "actions that facilitate open platform" is figuring out what really does this. Is what Microsoft doing really this?
Keep in mind that while Microsoft "repeatedly helped the Mono developers and have truly made an effort to set a new precedent with many of their .NET technologies," their CEO was talking about Linux violating Microsoft patents. There's no details to the allegation, of course. But it does make one very wary of accepting Microsoft's helping hand when you
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Moonlight is a patent minefield. Code contributed by microsoft (or anyone else) is not reviewed for possibly infringing microsoft patents, and if infringing code is discovered, it won't be removed because of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. That is to say, moonlight is open only to Novell enterprise linux users. Users of moonlight on any other version of linux are subject to being sued by microsoft or Novell.
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Not so fast. If you want to watch video on Silverlight, you have to install binary codecs supplied by Microsoft/Novell.
Sorry, but this is clearly Microsoft's classic Embrace/Extend/Extinguish play. If they manage to kill off Flash, just watch how fast Moonlight gets sidetracked.
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Well, Hulu *is* using Fox content for their coverage (having just checked it out myself). I'd find it boring, too!
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(Am I replying to one of Twitter's many accounts?)
There is no tying here. The inauguration was available from dozens of sites, in a wide variety of formats. It was trivial for any Linux user to find multiple sites that would work find with most Linux distributions either out of the box, or with a trivial install of some codecs.
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It was broadcast live by the BBC using the Flash-based iPlayer (on the news website so probably not limited to UK IP addresses).
Incidentally, Arethra Franklin started singing the British National Anthem. The music she sang is the same for the first few bars, I was half expecting that Obama was going to invite Her Royal Britannic Majesty to take over :-)
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It doesn't stream onto an abacus, either.
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Oh please. Give it a rest.
It is a historic occasion in that the first African American president of the United States is being inaugurated.
Millions of African Americans are witnessing something that many of them never in their wildest dreams believed they'd see in their lifetimes.
I didn't vote for the man, regardless of that he won, and as of this afternoon he will be my president. I am happy to witness this historic moment myself and I am happy for those people for whom this event is a dream come true.
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Are you sure that we haven't already had an African American president? Is the color of the skin what truly defines being African American or is it ancestry?
With regards to the social prejudices and obstacles that make the election of Barack Obama a historic event? Skin color, absolutely. Hell, there are plenty of dark-skinned people from places other than Africa that get lumped in with African Americans.
To quote a slashdot post from some time back, answering the question "Are we so racist that skin color
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I am fucking tired of always hearing 1st African American president this 1st African American president that !
How about we just call him what he is.......... The new President !
Enough of this divisive bullshit we have grown accustomed to, stop pointing out the differences and encourage the similarities it makes a lot more sense !
There should not be this title that constantly follows him around " 1st African American president " who fucking cares, all I want is a Pr
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Look, what if you work at a place where every mail server for the last 200+ years has been an Exchange server. You've been using Linux for years, but for some reason, they never implemented a Linux server in any significant infrastructure roles. You would complain about it, and they would say, "look, it's just a coincidence that Microsoft products get installed everywhere: they're just the best at what they do!"
Then, finally, they install a Linux-based mail server. Are you saying you would say, "stop callin
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Silverlight Mobile is coming soon to Windows Media and other devices such as anything based on Series 60.
The demos I've seen look good, although not sure how it handles video.
Saying that I've never seen Flash work on my mobile (Nokia N95 8GB), its meant to have Flash Lite but it just never seems to do anything.
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this page does work (Score:2, Informative)
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Moonlight can never be a substitute for Silverlight. They just back-ported the stream from SL 2.0 to SL 1.0 to get it running this time around.
You're right about the Linux hack though; the fact that they pulled this off this fast is quite a feat myself. Extreme, clanky balls made out of brass as well; if I was leading the effort at such a high-profile website, I'd have enforced a code-freeze at least a week earlier. (May be that's why I'm not in that position. Hmmmm.)
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``Also, isn't it kind of cool that the Presidential Inaugural Committee went to all that trouble to support Linux?''
I think it's dumb that they have to "support" any particular platform. If they had just used standards, any decent platform would have worked.
Patents (Score:2)
well, I guess that is what happens when the spec(ification)s for a technology are publicly available... you don't need the "lock-in" tool to use the technology, you can simply build your own...
With one exception: technologies covered by patents that are not licensed for implementation in Free designs. The article is about a video stream, and the codecs used for that tend to be patent minefields, apart from H.261 (expired recently) and Theora (freely licensed by On2).
Hard sandbox (Score:2)
I'm not installing any silverlight or faux-silverlight moonlight crap until there's an equivalent plugin as there is for flash: flashblock.
That's half the battle, for damn sure.
I'm not installing it until there's a hard sandbox. How's that code verifier going, Miguel? It seems to be sufficiently dodgy to keep server types from accepting CIL, so why should people running browsers be any more trusting?